one year ago today
Friday, August 1st, 2008
at 6:04pm
Where were you? What were you doing when you found out?
UPDATE: Trish remembers that day vividly.
Archive for August 1st, 2008
Thursday Night Light Track Bike Race Thing Wrap Up Report Story Time Post
Friday, August 1st, 2008
See how much weight I have lost! Oh, wait, that’s Little Guy in the blue jersey…the big tubby on the measurement line is me I guess. I am smarter than Little Guy because I ride low on the track and end up riding less distance than he does. With extreme age comes slightly more wisdom. Someday Little Guy will need to have some tricks when he gets old and fat and loses fitness.
I started all four races last night but really only participated in 3 and one half races.
First up was the Sprint Eccellente Veloce e Muto. 18 riders started the event which was divided into a Miss and Out to cull 9 riders and then a Scratch Race to determine the winner. I was the first rider pulled out of the race. Sayonara.
Next up was the King of Whatever. Three laps, three heats, one final. The only thing I was able to accomplish was to drive Crosby up to the rail on the first lap. He then accelerated and the whole field matching his acceleration and I pretty much sat up and started laughing because I was so unmotivated.
The Madison was unique in that the slow guys were matched with fast guys as team mates. I was paired up with Snowball and was a bit nervous about it because he’s a pretty fast guy and probably wanted to do well…and I am all slow like. But Snowball turned out to be pretty cool about things and, other than wanting me to concentrate a bit more on our exchanges, just wanted to have a good time and ride safe. Sounded good to me. So that’s what we did. The longer the race went on the better I was feeling. Kind of like a big diesel that needs to get warmed up before it really starts running well. Kind of like what Paul and Phil kept saying about Cadel Evans during the Tour, but I don’t have the squeaky voice or a dog that you might step on. I was even able to put in an attack late in the race. So it was somewhat awesome.
The final race was the 252 Drag Race. I was paired up against Phanna and was a little intimidated as his ride was much nicer than mine. But I was not going to shrink from the challenge. We both eyed the christmas tree for the countdown. I shifted from automatic into manual tiptronic so I would have total control over the gearbox. The light went green and we both lurched off the line. I kept the accelerator down and let the tach go into the red zone at 6500 rpm before shifting into 2nd. I had about half a hood length on Phanna through the next gear. Maybe he was being conservative but I was able to keep the gap on him across the line. VICTORY! Somewhat totally awesome.
All in all it was a fine time. Frye has some photos posted from last night.
